'Lonely heart' water voles crucial to population survival

September 6, 2012

Water vole on lantrine.

Young males and females can spend weeks crossing heather moors, bog lands and mountains, often putting themselves in grave danger in a bid to bag a mate. Their quest can see them embark on journeys of up to 15km from their birth place. Extraordinary for an animal not much bigger than a hamster and much further than was previously thought.

Professor Xavier Lambin, internationally recognised ecologist from the University of Aberdeen, said: "These lonely heart water voles who live in small colonies know they can't breed with their relatives and so they head off when their hormones kick in and they become unsettled because they know they have to reproduce if they are to survive.

"They will face a lot of dangers crossing unsuitable habitat to find a mate. Sometimes they get to one suitable patch and will spend three or four days there looking and waiting for a partner. If unlucky in love, they will head off again on their travels. What is amazing is that despite their small size, water voles can spend weeks and weeks covering great distances - much further than we expected - in their quest to find another water vole."

The 'dispersal' activities of these adventurous teenagers really are key to the population's survival because these 'immigrant' voles are joining or creating new colonies when others elsewhere are becoming extinct. Researchers used a variety of techniques which include DNA analysis and attaching tiny transmitters to voles living in the far north west of Scotland.

During the study, six researchers spent six weeks walking and climbing in the hills of Assynt between Lochinver and Ullapool. They discovered that the destiny of a colony is often linked to the destiny of its neighbours because of what are described as 'waves of death'. They found that if you have a big neighbouring colony that has had a catastrophe - even if those neighbours are 2 or 3 kilometres away - the chance is that you too will experience that catastrophe. As well as helping guide conservation, the researchers' findings have relevance far beyond the water vole.

"Knowledge of the way a fragmented population functions is crucial for conservation," added Professor Lambin. "Our research shows that water voles need a network of sites to survive – conserving only a single patch of land is no use."

This knowledge could prove valuable to ecologists working on the many species that have population structures similar to the water vole, from small insects to tigers.

Prof. Lambin continued, "More and more of these populations are becoming fragmented because of human activities, and some are close to their tipping point. In order to protect them we need to know more about the birth and death of these populations. We have gained a new understanding of the ability of populations to survive in fragmented habitats. And we have improved understanding of the dynamics of a charismatic, much loved but endangered species in the UK."

(PhysOrg.com) -- While size may not matter when it comes to humans, a new study published in Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology found that the width of the male bank voles penis plays a role in social dominance.

A study by Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) suggests that native otters are driving American mink from Britain’s riverbanks. Researchers found a significant relationship between the decline in mink ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Anxiety, or the reaction to a perceived danger, is a response that differs from one animal or human to another -- or so scientists thought. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University are challenging what we know ...

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers with members from several institutions in China has calculated what they believe is the minimum amount of land preservation needed to sustain wild giant panda populations. In their paper ...

The differences in how male and female fruit flies resist and adapt to oxidative stress may shed new light on how age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's affect men and women differently.

Many infectious pathogens are difficult to treat because they develop into biofilms, layers of metabolically active but slowly growing bacteria embedded in a protective layer of slime, which are inherently more resistant ...

Researchers have discovered a way to program cells to inhibit CRISPR-Cas9 activity. "Anti-CRISPR" proteins had previously been isolated from viruses that infect bacteria, but now University of Toronto and University of Massachusetts ...

Evolution is working hard to rescue some urban fish from a lethal, human-altered environment, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis, and published Dec. 9 in the journal Science.

0 comments

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.